When Czechoslovakia divided into two nations in 1993, cinema fans could be forgiven for thinking the new Czech Republic had hoarded the family silver. So many of the former nation’s finest directors – Věra Chytilová, Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, Jan Švankmajer – were Czech, so there’s a thrill of discovery in watching Second Run’s new DVD release of Pictures of the Old World. Based on the work of Slovak photographer Martin Martinček, directed by the Slovak director Dušan Hanák and voted by critics as the best Slovakian films of all time, Pictures of the Old World couldn’t have better national bona fides. It also couldn’t be better.
A monochrome chronicle of rural poverty in the tradition of Housing Problems and Dark Days, Pictures of the Old World takes a formally ambitious approach to exploring the world Martinček captured in his acclaimed photographs. Starting off with a selection of those photographs, Hanák’s first big jolt comes when a man and a cow walk into frame in what initially appears to be a still. It never settles down afterwards, mixing Martinček’s work with Hanák’s note-perfect recreations, exploring the life of its subjects through a mixture of interviews, observation, still photos and lively folk songs.
The people Hanák interviews are lively, funny, self-sufficient, bawdy and utterly resistant to self-pity, and the director matches his subjects’ vivacity with his own visual imagination
PICTUES OF THE OLD WORLD
On its release in 1972, it was re-edited by the then Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakian government to remove all evidence of “sadness, misfortune, poverty and belief in God”. The obvious joke is that this would reduce the already slender running time of Hanák’s sixty-five-minute film by about sixty-four minutes, but the sadness and misfortune are definitely in the eye of the beholder. The people Hanák interviews are lively, funny, self-sufficient, bawdy and utterly resistant to self-pity, and the director matches his subjects’ vivacity with his own visual imagination, including a screen-filling close-up of a chicken’s eye, and an unexpected detour into discussing the moon landings.
As life-affirming, precious and unique as Pictures of the Old World is, Second Run’s extras push the package from desirable to essential. As ever, there is a well-researched booklet (this time by Jonathan Owen) and two short films by Hanák which deserve to be watched alongside the main feature. They both represent different strains of Hanák’s work, very different elements which are combined in Pictures of the Old World.
1967’s Mass is a low-key, sensitive observation of the titular church service, with Hanák showing the same alertness to the contours and shadows of elderly faces that he would also exhibit in Pictures of the Old World. The avant-garde element of the main feature is developed in 1966’s astonishing Old Shatterhand Came to Us. Taking its title from the hero of a best-selling series of German Western novels, Old Shatterhand is a witty, free-from and ceaselessly inventive take on tourism and international travel, illustrating a dense sound collage by throwing its images into a cinematic blender where they’re mixed together, paused, repeated, rewound and counterpointed in what can only be described as an act of cinematic DJing. Second Run’s attention to Czech cinema has already been exemplary – it is to be hoped that Pictures of the Old World is the start of a similar cycle of treasures from Slovakia’s vault.
PICTURES FROM THE OLD WORLD IS NOW AVAILABLE ON SECOND RUN DVD
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